


Break Him In To The Wearing of Death

by theswearingkind



Category: A Pop Opera, Bare
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-02
Updated: 2007-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:04:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2141616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is possible to tell your life story in someone else's words.  </p>
            </blockquote>





	Break Him In To The Wearing of Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Big Damn Table prompt #30, death, and smallfandomfest's prompt of "Peter/Jason, growing up."
> 
> Title from Federico Garcia Lorca's "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias."

“Gone, baby, gone,” Peter mumbles, and doesn’t know why.  

*

The coffin went in the ground today.  Dark wood, silver hinges.  Jason will like it, when he comes back. 

(He’s not coming back.  Peter knows that.  He’s not that crazy, yet.)

Ivy is already starting to show.  He can see it now, if he looks for it.  Nothing special—just a low curve across her belly, a tendency to rest one hand at the juncture of her ribs.  There is a baby inside her, growing. 

She will be a beautiful mother, the envy of all the tired, dragged-down hags with fat husbands and mini-vans and two-point-five bratty kids spilling grape juice on the white carpet.  They will talk about her when her back is turned, and hate her without knowing her.

There is another Jason, somewhere, that loved Ivy like he could have.  Somewhere they are postcards and wedding banquets; they are Barbie dolls with painted smiles and nothing in between their legs.  They are easy to understand, and easy to throw away. 

Peter doesn’t know where his thoughts come from anymore. 

*

It’s not that life has no meaning now.  It’s just that he doesn’t care enough to go looking for it. 

It’s an important distinction. 

*

Peter is very tired.  He hasn’t slept in almost four days.  He sees Jason everywhere. 

Jason is in the back row in church, arms draped along the top of the pew, legs sprawled out into the aisle.  Jason is in their last history class, phantom limbs filling the empty desk across from Peter’s.  Jason is in the hospital, white and bloodless and already a thousand years away. 

Jason is in the coffin, in the ground, with the sun beating down and worms devouring what’s left of him.

He left his bed unmade, his book open on his desk.  Peter reads the underlined words on the dog-eared page: _oh, what longing for no, no, no, no.  How much life we spend or lose yes yes yes yes yes yes._ Another: _I have been wondering what you are thinking about, and by now suppose it is certainly not me.  But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering blood knows what it knows._   And another: _At night I fall asleep to the whippoorwill’s raucous lullabye, old as the first garden: never tell never tell never tell._  

They’re words.  They probably mean something. 

Peter closes the book and takes it with him when he leaves. 

*

Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

_Brothers and sisters—_

“I can’t believe he’d do something like this,” Rory had said.

_Let this be not a time of mourning for his death._

“I can’t believe he was—you know,” Zach had said.

_Let this be a celebration of his life._

“I can’t believe anything anymore,” Matt had said.

_Jason was young, but his life was full of love._

“I can help you,” Nadia had whispered to Ivy. 

_Love of his family, of his friends and neighbors.  And most importantly, the love of God._

“He made us very proud,” Mr. and Mrs. McConnell had said.

_He hated both of you_ , Peter thought fiercely. 

*

On another page, closer to the back, the letters traced in blue pen:

_But still.  Still.  Bless me anyway.  I want more life.  I can’t help myself.  I do._

The ink starts to blur.

*

They could have left school.  They could have moved to Massachusetts, or Canada, or the Netherlands, or Spain.  Peter hadn’t even known about Spain until Jason had told him. 

“We could go there, Peter,” Jason had whispered in his ear.  “You know the sun stays up there until midnight, sometimes, in the summer?  And we could get married.  We could get married and make love at midnight with the sun shining down on us.”

"Oh,” Peter had said, breathless with yes, “ _Te amo, mi amor,”_ and Jason’s hands had touched him like a prayer, like a promise.

That room, that second—it was as close as they ever got.  To Spain.  To anything else.

*

Peter wears black to the funeral, because that’s what people do, even though Jason hated it when he wore black. 

He sits by himself and watches the service through sandpaper eyes.  He is beyond tears. 

He doesn’t know what else he can do.  He feels them watching him, but no one will look him in the eye.  He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care.  He is the widower here, he’ll do what he wants. 

He doesn’t care.  Jason would have.

*

He adds his own: _I am getting drunk on the sound of a voice like yours in the hall.  And to know that everything is lost, that life—is a cursed hell.  O, I was so certain you would come back._

He doesn’t know who wrote it.  Jason was the smart one, after all. 

*

The sun comes up the next day.  How dare he. 

*

_Do you know what scares me most about you?_

What?

_That I can’t see a life without you now.  I try, and it’s like—fade to black.  It’s just not there anymore.  It’s you or nothing._

Better not be nothing.  Guess I’ll stick around, then.  
  
*  
  
Jason was born around Christmas, Peter late in the spring.  They were eighteen together for about a week, and then.  They weren’t anymore. 

On this day, for the first time, Peter will be older than Jason. 

He will open Jason’s book, the one he saved from their room, touch the pages that Jason touched on the last day he touched anything, and he will read it all, cover to cover, and he will write in the margins: _Farewell, but you will be with me, you will go within a drop of blood circulating in my veins or outside, a kiss that burns my face or a belt of fire at my waist._   And: _I’m sleepy, I’m loved, I’ve earned silence._

And another, the last:

_Oh_

_there is a God without you._

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes Used, In the Order in Which They Appear In the Story
> 
> -Pablo Neruda, “What We Accept Without Wanting To”  
> -Anthony Hecht, “A Letter”  
> -Linda Pastan, “Secrets”  
> -Tony Kushner, Angels in America ( Perestroika)  
> -Anna Akhmatova, “White Night”  
> -Pablo Neruda, “Letter on the Road”  
> -Roque Dalton, “Small Hours of the Night”  
> -Belle Waring, “So Get Over It, Honey”


End file.
